I’m a wannabe game writer. Not to say I can’t, but I don’t even focus enough to actually finish a game besides CuteGod (which still needs work). I never really created anything slick or polished, that final step for making a “real” game instead of throwing something up. However, there are a lot of fantastic little games out there. Most of them are pretty cheap (under $20), give a lot of hours of fun, and don’t need the greatest of all hardware to even show the introduction. And, this weekend, there are a few specials going on that I enjoyed.

http://www.indiestrategygames.com/

This is three games plus expansions. The first, Gratuitous Space Battles (GSB) is this cute little game where you make your ships, set it up, and watch them blow each other up. Now, that might not excite a lot of people, but I love the creator bits of 4X games and this doesn’t require hundreds of hours of time to get working. Just set up the battles and go. And, it kind of makes me feel like Ender. There is also Solium Infernum and AI War in there. I haven’t gotten to them, but they look like a lot of fun. Basically, I bought the back to find something new and to buy GSB.

The entire pack is $50 but I think I’m going to get my money’s worth on it (under $1/hour). I believe the special ends Monday.

http://www.direct2drive.com/2/9236/product/Buy-Best-of-Indie-Bundle-Vol.-3-Download

This is a bigger game pack for only $30. It has all the winners and finalists of the Independent Game Festival.

• World of Goo: I already own this game and absolutely love it. The goos make such adorable sounds. Hrm, reminds me, I need to ask about the profanity pack I ordered.
• Puzzlegeddon
• Gish
• The Maw
• Braid: Played this for an answer. It has some really neat puzzles, a bit on the hard part for me, but the “rewind time” is great for undoing mistakes.
• Cogs
• Aaaaa!
• Osmos
• Machinarium: This is a click puzzle adventure but it looks absolutely gorgeous.
• Crayon Physics Deluxe: I already reviewed this game, it is still great.

I like supporting indie game writers. Much like I support people who show up at GenCon to sell their books. Yes, most of them are POD or not through the classical distribution channels, but it doesn’t mean they poured less of their heart into it. Yeah, they might not be as fancy or smooth as the $60 game, but I think they can be just as much fun. Plus, for me, it is the fact I’m supporting someone who writes in their spare time, after doing their full-time jobs in hope that they’ll make it big. Because… I hope to be that person in my own time.

This last weekend, two friends from Illinois (Uteck and Bouncy) came to visit. I miss them a lot, mainly because there are aspects of my life that I haven’t found a friend locally. In Uteck’s case, we happen to enjoy running games and tweaking RPG’s to make them fit. He is also a Linux geek like me and we enjoy playing with programs in hopes they make our game running experience better.

We were in Half-Price Books, one of our favorite places, while Bouncy ran from shelf to shelf with child-like glee. I naturally had to mention that Anton Strout and Mark Henry had two–no doubt brilliant–books coming out this week (buy plug) but we would have to go to a non-used bookstore to get them.

But, we got to talking about RPG’s. And, more importantly, designing or taking existing systems and make them work for our styles of play.

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When I got home from work yesterday, I had two packages waiting for me. One was a new keyboard and SATA cable for my computer. I just replaced the DVD burner and found out I grabbed the wrong type (SATA instead of IDE). Instead of trying to return it, I just got the cables needed to set it up (I already had a SATA system) and just plugged it in. The other is the keyboard. I utterly hate keyboard shopping. I know it sounds strange, but after so many years of touch-typing both for writing and programming, I’m very sensitive to keyboard layouts. I struggle without the inverted-T for cursor keys, the 2R3C layout for the home keys and even the location of the backslash character. And I don’t like curved, split, or funny shapes either. Picky, but it makes it really hard to get a good keyboard.

The other is the thing I’ve been waiting for since GenCon: HERO 6E. HERO is the reason I dropped my home-brew systems (Balance and Triumph). Yes, it has some complexity, but it is a great generic system that shares my tenants of gaming. There are very few absolutes (probably the main reason I get frustrated with Exalted is there are too many perfects). It is also flexible. Yes, the numbers sometimes get hard for things like dimensional spaces, but I find that it works for almost every genre I happen to enjoy. Plus, I could easily run other worlds in it, like Fighterytpe’s Itrifore, my Fedran, or even Fluffy’s favorite: a cheerful Changeling game.

While I love HERO, there is something to be said about actually playing a game. I haven’t tried to really find a gaming group here in Iowa since I moved here. College, writing, and barely seeing Fluffy have put a pallor on that, but today, I’m going down to Critical Hits and hopefully doing a round or two of Pathfinder Society games. It is more structured than I really am used to. Most of my life, I’ve played home games with campaigns that lasted years with the same characters. And having all that history built up between the characters. With RPGA and Society games, I don’t get the same impression. It is more like a delve and go on, episodic television instead of integrated plots. You know, the difference between Star Trek verses Babylon 5. I like both, but there is that master plot in B5 that Star Trek just didn’t have. And I feel the same about this game.

But, a game is a game and I want to roll some dice and have some fun.

I seem to be drifting from Kingdom of Loathing lately. Actually, I started to work on some libraries, then completely lost interest in it. I haven’t really wanted to log into it for a few weeks now and I haven’t really missed it. I already knew that sooner or later I would get bored/frustrated with it, I just forgot how fast that feeling can hit me. And, the very nature of looking into the depths of the system just accelerated the process.

One thing is that KoL, while a fun and snarky game, is still a magpie game for me. I run around to get lots of little things, just to get my rating up for the most items collected, but it really doesn’t do anything. Outside of the game, there is nothing for all that effort I spent. I donated to the game, because I was having fun, but I just hit this point where the grind ceased to be fun.

(Interestingly, this is also why I don’t write fanfics anymore either. I can’t really… do anything with them beside write and post.)

But, I did get some really good idea for writing a game to add to my list of the “perfect game”. Not sure if I’ll ever actually write this game, since I’m sort of trying to focus on writing and college right now, but I can say that I don’t regret the time or money I spent, I’m just done for the time being.

There is a walking challenge at work for the next six weeks. Trying to get as many steps as possible, so I’m aiming for 500,000. It is a doable goal, but will require me to push a lot harder than I have been. Which is perfect since I really need to push if I want to keep losing weight. I got my 5% by GenCon so I’m hoping to hit my 10% goal by the end of the year.

Bah, decided not to do a day-by-day for GenCon right now. Basically, the second day was great. The games got a lot more exciting, except for Shooting Ladders. While Fluffy and I were looking forward to it, the game ended up being more tactical and tedious than we expected. Just too many things to keep track of and too much strategy in the type of games we like.

I also played in the League of Unextraordinary Gentlemen, set in a HERO system. That was a fair amount of fun, mainly because we had a GM who could handle anything we threw at it. While it still had the normal railroaded plot that I expected in a con game, it was fun playing Mario from Super Mario Brothers and Lydia Deets from Beetlejuice.

On the third day, Saturday, I lost half the day for other reasons. Sen So looked like a lot of fun; Fluffy played that without me. She said she loved it so I went to buy it. One of the other players was right in front of me and basically cleaned out the store of all the cards. Bummer, but the next day I found out they had more so I got to get almost everything for her. This will definitely be showing up at our next board game night.

I also got to play a Desolation game (kind of fantasy post apoplictic game). I playtested that a few years ago at GenCon at it was cool to see how it evolved (including a few rules that came up during our session).

The last game, at just about midnight, was Snakes on a Train. A very fun HERO 6 game. I got the “worthless” character who couldn’t tell anyone he was using his powers or have anyone use them. But he had a 75 point VPP pool. So, I got to play an old-style Mage from World of Darkness. Except, my weapons were “look out for the cow!” and the world’s second largest ball of twine. Overall, definitely worth playing until three in the morning.

I only had one game on Sunday. I was an hour late (didn’t pay attention to the start) and they stopped an hour early (car checkout was 14:00). But, for the little bit I got to play, I had fun.

When I got back, I was seriously ready to head home. We actually got all the driving done on Sunday: four hours to Illinois, an hour getting dogs and my luggage *sigh*, then another four getting back to Iowa.

This was probably the most miserable GenCon I ever had, but I still had a lot of fun. Just took the effort to not let my pain ruin my having fun and it actually seemed to work. I missed a lot that I wanted to do: I missed some comics I wanted to pick up, hunting down Anton Strout to say hi, and going to some of the writer seminars. I’ll post about the authors as soon as Fluffy uploads her pictures; might as well have images for those who enjoy it.